The next season of Game of Thrones starts at the end of April, so let's celebrate by emulating a key component of George R. R. Martin's writing style: write a story in which at least one of the most important main characters dies at a critical time in the plot. The character's death should leave loose ends and serve as a motivator for the story to continue in an unexpected direction.

Stories submitted to this competition are non-canon, so it's perfectly OK to kill off or injure other people's characters without permanent repercussion. Feel free to whack Oberst, Farrin or even Pravus himself and see where that story could take you.

Stories should be written in any popular word processing format and should be a minimum of 500 words in length. Please do not send links to Google Docs; export them as PDF or Word format instead. Stories will be graded using the standard fiction rubric with special consideration given to use of the above plot device.